photo by: Contributed Photo

A photo from a past Yart Sale at New York Elementary School. The 2026 Yart Sale is on Saturday, March 28, 2026.

In his decades of living in East Lawrence, Tony Peterson says, a lot has changed, but “the Yart Sale has always been one of the constants.”

“I’m not even sure how long ago it started,” he says.

It’s one of those ad-hoc, organic neighborhood things, part garage sale, part gallery, part “unofficial neighborhood party,” and never the same from one year to the next. This year’s is on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at New York Elementary School, 936 New York St., and Peterson says you never know what you’ll find there.

“They can buy plants, they can buy artwork, little tchotchkes, baby shoes, something for everyone,” Peterson says.

“I bought so many tchotchkes there,” he continues. “A little Japanese-import green cat with an orange ball in its mouth. It’s like radioactive Japanese import crap. I love it.” It’s still sitting near the window of his pre-Civil War house.

The closest thing the Yart Sale has to an organizer, East Lawrence Neighborhood Association coordinator Lane Eisenbart, would guess that it started in the mid-’90s and heard that it was originally an effort to raise money to save an old barn.

However and whenever it began, it’s turned into ELNA’s biggest fundraiser. It draws in artists from the neighborhood and beyond, who donate 10% of their sales for the day to the neighborhood association.

photo by: Contributed Photo

A photo from a past Yart Sale at New York Elementary School. The 2026 Yart Sale is on Saturday, March 28, 2026.

Eisenbart expects 15 artists this year, but it’s hard to say what else to expect. At the Yart Sale, “things just happen organically,” she says, no matter what ELNA plans.

“I think it has a life of its own,” Eisenbart says. “I just herd the cats as best I can.”

It starts on Friday night, when the New York school gym will be open for donations and setup. Eisenbart says the gates will be open and people can drive onto the blacktop off of New Jersey Street and donate old items.

“We’ll load them in, we’ll set up tables, sort out all the donations, artists will come in and set up their stuff, their tables and things,” Eisenbart says. The drop-off is technically from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, but donations still trickle in on the day of the sale, too.

“It is so organic,” Peterson says. “Come on a Friday night, people will just start showing up and dropping off things, and there’s no plan at all.” The organization is often done based on who sets something down first. “Once somebody puts something down, that’s where the pots and pans are going to be,” he says, or the clothes, or the art. “It’s never really organized.”

And there’s food for those setting things up – often chili or pizza, Peterson says. This year, Eisenbart says, it’ll be chili, made by ELNA board member Aaron Paden.

photo by: Contributed Photo

This is Lane Eisenbart’s “very favorite Yart Sale promo poster ever made,” drawn by Ivy Bitters in 2018. Bitters is now in high school.

When the sale begins on Saturday, expect an eclectic mix of artists, offering crochet products, tie-dye, ceramics, cross-stitch, “experimental music” and more.

Some of them are from outside of the neighborhood – Eisenbart mentioned a resin artist from Leavenworth, Crystal Owens, who makes “all kinds of things, like jewelry pieces, or trays, or any number of things with resin.” But most of them are local, she says.

“It’s largely East Lawrence artists, but not exclusively,” Eisenbart says. “I do try to make priority for East Lawrence residents, and also for young people.”

That’s because it can be difficult for younger artists to get into the art market scene. In Eisenbart’s own experience as an artist, art markets are often expensive to participate in, but the Yart Sale doesn’t ask for anything from artists except the 10% cut of their sales.

“It’s like, you have to pay for your table, for your spot, for $100, and you may not even sell anything” at other art markets, she says. “So I try not to make it like that. I try to make it accessible, especially for young people, especially people just starting off in the art market thing, we try to make that a priority.”

Peterson is an artist, as well; he used to do photography but now has moved on to bleach-printed fabric. The fact that the Yart Sale doesn’t charge for a booth makes it a good way to test prices for art shows that do, he says.

“Selling art is really tough, figuring out how to price things, because it’s so arbitrary,” he says. But at the Yart Sale, “no entry fee, it’s just a percentage of whatever I sell.”

There are also Yart Sale regulars who aren’t artists, like Carol Schwarting. Eisenbart says that each October, Schwarting takes cuttings from houseplants and cares for the starts through the winter, then sells them at the Yart Sale each spring “and donates all the proceeds to East Lawrence or to the New York PTA, whichever she’s feeling that day.”

“She’s been doing this the entire time that the Yart Sale has existed,” Eisenbart says.

photo by: Contributed Photo

Carol Schwarting, left, grows cuttings of houseplants over the winter and sells them at the Yart Sale each year.

There will be live music, too, and the New York school students and PTA take part in the fun as well by selling baked goods. And new this year, Eisenbart says, will be a donation drive for the Central Community Closet at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, which collects hygiene items such as laundry detergent, deodorant and body wash for students who receive free and reduced-price lunch.

Once the sale is over, any donated stuff that hasn’t sold “goes away,” Peterson says. “It has to go somewhere, so it goes away; it gets donated to Goodwill, Social Service League, any sort of nonprofit.”

And the funds raised go to ELNA’s general operations and sometimes to grants for small neighborhood projects, Eisenbart says. While she isn’t the treasurer, she says it’s typical for the Yart Sale to raise a few thousand dollars.

East Lawrence as a neighborhood has had a “tough” existence in the past, Peterson says – “not tough in terms of violence or anything like that, but we were always discarded as irrelevant, literally, by the city for years.” He thinks the neighborhood has changed a lot and gentrified, but traditions like the Yart Sale bring its longtime residents together.

“It’s kind of like the core of old-timers,” he says. “Oh, God, that sounds really old. The regulars. The musicians and the artists and the collectors of crap come together for four hours of community.”

And if you’re not an old-timer or a regular, you’re invited, too, he says. “Come, come, come.”

photo by: Contributed Photo

Live music is always a part of the Yart Sale. The 2026 Yart Sale is on Saturday, March 28, 2026.